“In particular, the segment from Santa Clara to Diridon is a duplicate of Caltrain service, in a segment that has plenty of capacity. Caltrain ridership has increased over two times over the last decade, and popular peak hour trains show a high level of crowding.

However, Diridon-Santa Clara has plenty of room. According to Caltrain’s recent ridership counts, there were only 39 passengers heading Northbound getting off in Santa Clara (coming from Diridon or points South) and only 11 passengers heading southbound from Santa Clara in the morning (Santa Clara to Diridon).”

If Caltrain has plenty of room between Santa Clara and San Jose Diridon stations, and many travelers have some other transportation choices, including bicycling and VTA bus routes 22 and 522, why build BART there too? BART is even more extra service where it’s not needed.

“Analysis shows that VTA could get more transit service for the money by refraining from building the extra BART station, and using the money instead to increase Caltrain service frequency to match BART frequency in Santa Clara County.

VTA officials consider to the locations of the Santa Clara and Alum Rock station to be fixed, but are choosing between two locations for the Downtown station and the Diridon station. Officials are now pushing for a more costly single 45-foot wide tunnel under Santa Clara Street rather than two 20-foot tunnels as assumed previously.

Running commuter rail as often as BART is wasteful because the trains are heavier and have a higher operating cost. It’s also less convenient to use and so would attract fewer riders.

Affen_Theater

With electrification and use of high-performance state-of-the-art Swiss EMUs with regenerative braking (i.e. braking energy returned to the wire), Caltrain will with planned service frequency increases have essentially completed its years-long evolution from classic commuter rail (e.g. ACE or Caltrain Gilroy service) to BART-comparable transit rail.

“[Commuter rail] also less convenient to use and so would attract fewer riders.”

Ridership is most influenced by service level. Commuter rail’s key convenience disadvantage from a rider’s perspective is lack of frequent service (and typically very little — or no —off-peak, night, weekend and holiday service) and the need to consult a schedule and carefully plan accordingly or face a very long wait or, in the case of the last train of the commute period or day, having to unexpectedly and hurriedly find and use another mode and face being late to your final destination.